Comparison of penetration depth in bead-on-plate welds of thick-walled steel sheets with Laser Beam Welding in Vacuum and Electron Beam Welding

Abstract

Electron Beam Welding is unchallenged concerning weld seam quality, but in case of penetration depth, the Laser Beam Welding in Vacuum (LaVa) can keep up and even outperform EBW in case of bead-on-plate welds using maximum beam power of 40 kW. The work presented here combines the advantages of reduced working pressure with modern high energy Laser beam sources and extends the recent limits of deep penetration welding to a defect-free single layer weld seam with a penetration depth of 115 mm in medium strength steel S355JR.